Far Cry 5 (PC) review

On April 11, 2018 by Aaron Meehan

Ubisoft’s latest title, Far Cry 5, brings the open world Far Cry series to the United States as you take on the role of a rookie Deputy who must save his captured colleges and the people of Hope County from a dangerous and powerful doomsday cult known as Project at Eden’s Gate.

With a strong emphasis on gameplay, open world fans should feel at home with Ubisoft’s latest game, unfortunately, those who are looking for a strong story will be left somewhat disappointed.

Going straight into the story you play the role of a rookie deputy who accompanies the sheriff, two deputies and a US Marshal as they go-to arrest Joseph Seed, the leader of the Project at Eden’s Gate cult, however, things don’t go as planned and your friends are taken by cult and you are rescued by a doomsday prepper called Dutch. Now, with your friends captured and divided amongst Joseph’s heralds your mission is to free each of the game’s three regions, free your friends and stop Joseph once and for all.

While the game is essentially a straightforward revenge story, the game does like to make your quest through the game’s three regions feel somewhat unique with one region being heavily militarised and another uses a drug called ‘The bliss’ to bend people to the cult’s will. While it is great that each region has their own unique styles, these styles do lose their charm after a while.

If I was to look at problems with the story, two issues stand out for me. The first is that at certain points throughout the game you will be captured by the region’s herald, this odd process is primarily to help flesh out each of heralds and provide the player with additional story information. Now, getting captured isn’t a major issue, although the way the enemies go around capturing you is, for example, on one occasion I was flying my helicopter when suddenly my screen began to fade to black and I woke up in one of the cult’s prisons.
On the positive side of getting captured, there is zero penalty to getting caught because as soon as you escape the cult all your items are instantly returned.

My second issue is that the story fails to explain why the US government hasn’t done more than just send in a US Marshall, a sheriff and a handful of deputies to arrest someone who created an armed militia on US soil.

Moving onto the characters I think they can be best described as one dimensional with the game having characters’ spout their entire life story and explain what their role in the game is. For example, one character that makes enhancements constantly talks about his abusive father, okay its information on the character but do we really need to constantly hear about it.

Now, while the majority of the characters forcing their backstory down your throat, I feel that the main antagonist, Joseph Seed was a pretty well-developed character. While his motivations were force fed to us during cutscenes his character had a commanding presence throughout the game, with the character coming across as equal parts madman and calculated villain.

Moving away from the characters I want to talk about the politics in the game. As someone who isn’t from the United States, the politics felt rather shocking with a character openly insulting former President Obama and telling you to kill cultists simply because they won’t vote for him. The game also has the NPCs display a lot of patriotic attire with the US flag and other symbols of the US spread all over their clothes, I mean showing pride in your country is great, but it just felt unnerving.

Moving away from the politics and story we have the all-important gameplay. Gameplay wise Far Cry 5 did a great job of balancing the open world and RPG elements of the game, but I do have to say that the game did a poor job of giving the player any downtime, sure we have the Far Cry arcade, fishing and hunting, but every time I jumping into a car or walking around I had to fight a near constant barrage of enemies. The constant barrage got to the point that when undertaking outpost liberation missions I had to fight more enemies on the way to the outpost than cultists in the outpost. However, as I progressed further into the game I managed to overcome the overwhelming numbers by spawning a helicopter and laying waste to all those around me with its machine guns and rockets.

As I said there are some elements of downtime built into the game with the fishing, hunting and arcade. For me, fishing was the best de-stress tool I found in the game as it was so relaxing to cast a line and attempt to catch a fish. As for the hunting, it was relaxing, but it was really just a way to get a little extra cash for ammo and health packs.

The arcade, which is another way to de-stress, is a number of mini-games created by fans via the Far Cry Arcade Editor. The arcade contains four solo and co-op modes and two multiplayer modes. If you want to see what other players can make or get ideas for your own arcade creation, the Far Cry Arcade is a treat.

Looking at the RPG aspects of Far Cry 5 we have the perk and crafting systems. The perk system allows you to unlock new abilities and items that can help you in various ways, unlockable perks include: two additional weapon slots, an additional squad slot, and improved reload and aim for your weapons. Personally, the most interesting aspect of the perk system is that the points required to unlock the various perks are mainly acquired through completing challenges and finding perk magazines.

In relation to the crafting system, it is based around making throwable items such as Molotov cocktails and dynamite. The crafting system also allows you to create enhancements, which provide a temporary defensive or offensive buff.

Moving slightly away from the RPG elements we have the squad roster, which allows up to two AI partners to help you in battle. There are a total of nine specialists and three fighters in the squad roaster. The fighters provide basic ground support, while the specialists are characters that offer unique skills and traits, for example, the specialist Nick Rye is a pilot who will bomb and strafe enemies, and Boomer the dog is a scout that will highlight nearby enemies and retrieve weapons from dead enemies. The squad roster is an important part of Far Cry 5 and I recommend always having at least one squadmate active at any given time, because when its one against many it is easy to get overwhelmed.

Before I finish talking about the gameplay, I want to talk about how you free the game’s three regions. To free each region you must fill the region’s resistance bar, once filled you can defeat the herald controlling the region and then you free it. To fill the bar you need to complete story and side missions, take out VIP enemies, and most enjoyable of all destroy or retake cultist property such as outposts, silos and roadblocks.

Now as I finish talking about the gameplay, I want to point out that Far Cry 5 offers an impressive minimalistic HUD. At its most cluttered the HUD only contains four elements: your active mission, ammo and health count, markers indicating localised targets, and small line based compass. Despite only having four elements the HUD provides all the information the player needs.

Looking at the graphics, Far Cry 5 is another beautiful game from Ubisoft with the developers capturing the visual beauty of a rural life from the log cabins to the fish-filled lakes and rivers.

Falling through the world happens more often than you might think.

Unfortunately, during my time playing Far Cry 5 I encountered at least nine game breaking issues, these include four crashes on loading screens, falling through the world while using a parachute at least three times and two freezes. These issues were incredibly annoying, especially falling through the world as they were incredibly easy to replicate.

Conclusion

While Far Cry 5 offers some fun if not repetitive gameplay, the story and characters fail to match its interesting premise.